So Near, and Yet So FarKirt's Cogitations™
#128

We can directly
observe the composition of the rings of Saturn - 850 million miles away
- but we still can't figure out what lies at the center of our Earth
- a mere 4,000 miles away! Traditional theory suggests it is a solid
core of nickel-iron, surrounded by a liquid region of iron, nickel,
and a mix of sulfur, oxygen and silicon. A more avant-garde postulate
claims a literal nuclear reactor core of uranium and plutonium, surrounded
by a molten core of iron, sulfur and silicon. Both dynamo models account
handily for the Earth's magnetic field - including the cyclic variations.
The greatest hole ever drilled, on Russia's Kola Peninsula, is only
7.5 miles deep, or less than 0.2% of the way to the center. In geophysicist
Herndon's words, "That's roughly comparable to learning about Alaska
by driving from St. Petersburg, FL to Tampa."

A huge collection of my 'Factoids' can be accessed from my 'Kirt's Cogitations'
table of contents.

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in the form of WYSIWYG
...

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